Juanito Valderrama

Juanito Valderrama, who has died aged 87, was a giant in the flamenco world, one of the most popular performers and most innovative artists in this tradition of heartfelt and dramatic song rooted in the gypsy culture of Andalucia.

His chief innovation within that somewhat conservative tradition was as a writer of his own lyrics. He was an accomplished cantautor (or singer-songwriter) decades before the term became a commonplace in Spanish popular culture.

In flamenco parlance, he was a cantaor, a performer of the cante jondo, the melancholy sentimental ballads typical of the genre.

One song more than any other is associated with him: El Emigrante, written by Valderrama in 1949, is an anguished ballad of yearning for what a Spanish emigre has left behind.

The date is crucial, for this was written before Spain became a country of mass economic emigration: the emigres to whom it refers were, in fact, the hundreds of thousands of refugees exiled as supporters of the losing side in the Civil War that ushered in Franco's 40-year dictatorship.

Related Articles

Valderrama was also a successful impresario, nurturing the early careers of some of flamenco's latter-day greats, such as the late Camaron de la Isla or Jose Merce.

It is debatable whether he deserved to be called a sympathiser with the Franco regime - a charge that tended to erode his popular appeal in the last years of the dictatorship.

True, he had - in common with many another star in the flamenco firmament - performed for the amusement of the Caudillo and his cronies, for whom flamenco symbolised a pure strain of the Spanish culture they purported to champion. But there was another side to the story.

Summoned to perform for a hunting party in Franco's honour - an offer he could not refuse, on pain of imprisonment - Valderrama was told to sing El Emigrante.

He did so with some trepidation, and was astounded when the dictator himself requested an encore, describing it as a "wonderfully patriotic" number. The singer performed it again, hoping that its subversive message would go over the heads of Franco and his hosts. He got away with it.

In reality, the lyric had been inspired by the tears Valderrama had witnessed on the cheeks of Republican exiles, moved to grief by his performance at the Teatro Cervantes in Tangier; it was a quintessential protest song avant la lettre, scribbled on the back of his hotel bill.

Born at Torredelcampo in Jaen province on May 24 1916, Juan Valderrama Blanca Valderrama grew up a tiny man with an impish grin usually topped by a typical flat-brimmed sombrero from Cordoba.

His parents were peasant farmers, and he recalled singing as a child to their olive trees, and accompanying his father to trade horses or mules at gypsy ferias.

His talent was recognised when he won a village competition at the age of eight. In 1934 he was recruited into the touring song company of Nina de la Puebla, with which he made his debut in Madrid's Cine Metropolitano.

When the Civil War broke out, Valderrama enlisted in the loyalist ranks (in an anarchist battalion) and toured the front lines, digging trenches and entertaining the troops and the wounded.

His artistic reputation helped him escape the reprisals visited on the vanquished Republicans in the post-war years. Instead, he dedicated himself to performing and promoting flamenco all over Spain and occasionally abroad.

Valderrama performed with some of the foremost names in flamenco - Aurora Pavon, Nina de los Peines, Pepe Marchena, los Gaditanos - but from the 1950s his shows extended beyond the traditional canon.

He had a keen sense of changes in public taste, attracting derision from certain flamenco purists when he interspersed conventional popular songs, or coplas, with those of the thoroughbred cante jondo.

He defended the practice as a means of widening the audience base for the authentic sound - and as a way out of the hardships facing a cantaor passing around the hat for a few pesetas.

His sternest critics derided him for participating in the watering-down of a passionate art form into a mass-market spectacle; what would nowadays be hailed as "crossover" was seen as heresy.

Valderrama's recording career began in 1935 and lasted more than six decades. More than 1,500 songs are left to posterity, though his repertoire was larger by far.

With his accompanist, el Nino Ricardo, he started writing his own songs; a dozen of the 300 credited to his pen were major hits. Apart from El Emigrante, his signature tunes included De Polizon (The Stowaway); Su Primera Comunion (Her First Communion); and Madre Hermosa (Sweet Mother). He also acted in seven films, of middling quality.

For many who lived through the bleak years of Francoism, Valderrama's voice was very much a part of the soundtrack, and consequently he fell somewhat out of favour with the public when democracy was restored, despite his impeccable Republican credentials.

He returned more fully to the flamenco tradition in the latter part of his long career, and was an acknowledged expert on the many local variants of Andalucian song, such as granainas, malaguenas, bulerias, soleares, fandangos or cartageneras.

His constant companion for half a century was the flamenco songstress Dolores Abril, a teenager of striking beauty who was performing as Lolita Caballero when she joined Valderrama's touring company in 1954 and for whom he abandoned his first wife.

Divorce was not feasible in Spain in those days, and it was not until 1979 that he was able to get his short-lived first marriage annulled. A civil marriage to Dolores in 1981 received the Church's blessing six years later.

Valderrama formally retired in 1994, but made occasional television appearances thereafter. On February 23, the Andalucian regional government hosted a concert in Madrid in his honour at which he gave his last public performance. Soon after, he suffered a heart attack.

He was convalescing at his chalet in Altos de Espartinas, Sevilla, and preparing for an afternoon stroll through the neighbourhood when he died on April 12. He is survived by Dolores, their daughter Blanca and son Juan, himself a noted singer and actor.